Okay my new SMC pump has been holding rock strong for 2 months or more and it's still holding fine. This time it's the freaking controller. I hit 20 psi Friday and noticed my light didn't come on and felt the car yank a ton of timing. WTF? Slowly hit boost and watched the gauge and around 10 psi the spray light luminates. Hmmmmm. Did it again and the same thing. I pondered for a while and on the next road I slowly increase boost again. Nothing. Wierd. Again and nothing. WTF? Again and it came on. WTF even more? Hmmm maybe I have a nasty boost leak in the line. Went home and checked it all. Nope all is fine. Took the air compressor set the regulator at 14 psi and put the air in the hose. Boost gauge pegs 14-15 psi and the controller came on. Did this three times. WTF is wrong here? I then took the tee that splits the gauge and controller and put an inline barb so only the boost gauge is hooked up. Bam 14 psi and it held it a while before bleeding off. Hmmm that seems fine. Did the same to the controller and it sprayed meth all in the air (oh I did disconnect the FMIC pipe so my engine won't get flooded). Hmmmm. Hooked it all back up and the meth is spraying under boost. 3 times and then it stopped working again. So now I have a seriously random controller that I don't know what to do with it. I'm calling SMC today to see if he will replace my controller. So you guys with the SMC kit.....PAY ATTENTION TO THE SPRAY LIGHT AND YOUR PUMPS! It may be the wiring after talking with Steve.
Wow I sent an email and in 15 minutes Steve replied and he is sending a new controller. Hopefully the controller is the issue. In the meantime I'm testing all the wiring connections and such.
I need to do some research on other kits and fail safes. I went with SMC purely on Siegel's recommendation. I'd be willing to give it another chance IF I can get a decent fail safe. I don't wanna blow my motor funding SMC's experiments. Scott and I were talking about using the PLX's 2-variable alarm to cut the boost solenoid if the right conditions are met (e.g. AFR>XXX and Boost>YYY). Are you just against SMC or methanol in general?
As long as it isn't costing me a dime I'm keeping mine. However when the 2.5L and the Hydra goes in the car I'm going with the Hydramist. They seem to be holding up just fine. My car is soooo darn slow on the pump gas tune that it ticks me off.
CoolRex Eventually its going to cost you, when you pop a motor Milo, I really don't like Meth in General but the SMC kits have proven to be problematic over and over again. My coolingmist kit worked fine but it was only on the car for 10000 miles so who knows if it would have failed.
That's fine....there's a longblock sitting at the house Just have to push harder to get the rest of the stuff. Also I am willing to bet that I am more generous to my motor than anyone on this board. I CONSTANTLY monitor the car and one little blip grabs my attention and then I start investigating. I was using the DeltaDash when I was investigating this and it wasn't knocking a lot....just enough to yank the timing some.
Ditto the only reason I got mine was because Siegel praised it. I'm going with the Hydramist since I will already have the Hydra. The Hydra monitors the Hydramist and the Hydramist has some VERY good failsafes. If the Hydra detects something wrong on the Hydramist it will automatically revert to an alternate map (ie pump gas map).
You still don't want a failure, with straight water injection you can lean the car out a lot so if the pump fails you are still going to pop a motor
Cliff notes of my limited research on the matter (Not necessarily facts, this is stuff I gathered online and I need to verify. Still need to do a lot more research on this): A lot of people have gone with SMC since they have been around the longest (Turbo Buicks). Most of the kits in use are SMC. Hence the same percentage failure rate appears to be a lot more just because of sheer numbers. The last I checked, SMC was also the only one that recommended using 100% meth. Most of the others I looked at recommended 50% mixture. Regardless, the only reason I still am considering meth is because of the cheap, on-demand power thats available. I can cruise around with a tank full of meth and run the meth map without using any meth unless I really need to. I don't want a race gas map because I don't want to burn it up just driving around. However, the unreliability of these kits in general is making this endeavor questionable. I think I am going to cancel my tuning appointment unless I have a failsafe installed and operational. If the PLX can do what I would like it to do as a failsafe, then I'll get the meth tune done. As for coolingmist, Ankur went to Maryland to get his car tuned this past weekend. I believe he went with a coolingmist kit running 50% mixture of meth and water. His tuner told him that he has seen plenty of coolingmist failures with straight meth but not even one with 50% mixture.
Milo I've talked to Phil Grabow numerous times inquiring about the Hydramist and he said if you want power then 100% meth. However if you want power "AND" reliability then go at least 70/30 meth/water. My buddy Daniel has the SMC kit that he got about 2-3 months after I got my original one (Feb 2006 I think). He runs a 50/50 mix and is running great. Other than the SUPER rich tune he has no issues. Also his pump isn't leaking a drop and he has the original 4 screws pump. If I get another leaking pump, I'm going 70/30 mix. On the Hydramist I'm going 70/30 mix.....shoot I may even go 50/50 as Daniel has around 30-40K miles on his meth tune.
Delette and I have been friends for years, so I've heard of every little bobble this system has had since he first put it on the car... I admit the results when it works are impressive, but the reliablity of the system has given me the impression that adding this kit, and any other kit that doesn't have a fail safe system, is just adding another point of failure for your car. I think Steve at SMC has very good customer service, any time that Delette has had a problem, he's provided replacements, but the fact that Delette has had to send something back to be replaced or refitted every few months it seems, really makes me iffy on the kit to begin with. True, he's running 100% meth which is rather caustic on seals designed for other liquids, but SMC's been in this business a long time, and if 100% meth is so bad on the hardware, you'd think they would've found a way around it, or else they would be telling people not to run 100% meth. I've personally decided that without a failsafe... such as the Hydra system where the ECU reverts back to the normal pump gas map if it detects any anomaly with the meth injection system... that I won't use methanol injection on my car.
Depends on how you get your methanol. You see I have a local supplier that you 'have' to buy at least 5 gallons. When they give it to you there is a dial like at the gas pump that tells you how many gallons is being pumped. Take 2 5 gallon gas tanks and fill each with 3.5 gallons of methanol. Then get 3 gallons of distilled water and pour 1.5 gallons each in the gas tank. There ya go 70/30 mix of meth/water. More useful and efficient power seems to be had from the 70/30 mixture.
In almost 2 years of service, I've had no problems out of my SMC kit other than replacing the pump recently with one of the new ones. The original pump started leaking. I run 100% meth. I just make sure that I check the test button each time the car is cranked. And I always filter the meth while pouring it into my Spec C tank.
You see that is what irks me.....it VERY hit and miss. I mean comeon Milo had a brand new pump and in a matter of the first few pulls it leaked.
i still vote for c16 map for track and pump map for street... honestly guys, are you going to use all 500+tq on the streets that often?
I enjoy every foot pound of torque on the street. I'm not about top speed, more about acceleration, and I enjoy it on every on ramp C16 would be awesome. But I would hate to burn it up just cruising. I think I'm going to get my car tuned on a 66-33 mix of meth and water.
The guy I bought our brakeman front brake kit from did a lot of time attack stuff on the west coast, and he said that he was running leaded 110 octane gas with meth, and when he moved to a street tire racing class, they required unleaded fuel, so he moved to running unleaded 109 octane gas and water injection, and made more power than meth+110 leaded. -- Brian
I was always curious about that. My intuition says that if you are running high octane gas, then the octane boost provided by meth might be minimal, if even noticeable. At that point, there might be more to be gained from the cooling capability of water, which is much better than meth.
Well, he also said that the quality of unleaded 109 octane gas was a lot better than the 110 leaded gas, providing better power gains. Apparently, lead is the easiest way to add octane, but not the best? If it was street legal, I would get our car tuned for 109 unleaded and get a barrel of it. But, I am going to stick to street legal 100 octane once we get a trailer and tow vehicle.
How many of the new pumps have leaked besides Milo's? I haven't read of any besides his. And Siegel said that was the first that he had seen leak... I haven't exactly been reading up on failures, as my kit has been worry free up until a few weeks ago.(knock on wood) I think that there could be a mis-conception on the failure rates of the SMC kit due to there being SOOOOO many out there vs. others. From what I've seen, the SMC pump seems to have a higher success rate when running 100% meth. But again, I don't read every meth injection thread out there...So take my opinion for what it's worth. Probably not much...
2 parts methanol, 1 part distilled water. The spec-C tank holds 12 liters, which is a little over 3 gallons. I can buy a 1 gallon jug of distilled water, mark the level, and pour it in. Then fill the jug up to the marked level with methanol. Pour that in the tank. Repeat again with methanol. Thats 3 gallons total, 2 gallons methanol, 1 gallon water. If the tank is not empty, then before I pour in the distiller water, I'll pour some of it out and mark the level. Repeat the same procedure. That would make exact 2:1 mixture every time.
I truely think that if I stopped running 100% meth, that I would just go 50/50. Much less of a head ache trying to mix. You will probably never run your Spec C tank down anywhere close to empty. It's just a risk getting the mixture wrong IMO.
The way I look at it, mixing 50-50, 66-33, 75-25, 80-20, etc. are all just as easy (or difficult) to get the mixture right.
Then Siegel must not listen to me when I told him my new pumps were failing. He knew I had pumps fail left and right. I've had 3 of the new pumps fail on me. I've had 7 pumps total fail on my and I have 1 controller failure which a new one should have been sent to me Friday so I hope to get the new controller today. Many times people test the pumps and they don't look at the pump itself. You can't just look at the pump. You have to actually grab it and wrap your hand around it to feel for the leak. Many times mine wasn't visually leaking until I grabbed the pump and it was all damp around it.
Techlord's pump has the new design and it started leaking last week. He was running 100% methanol IIRC. I am sure there is some truth in this. A friend of mine recently purchased a Coolingmist kit for his turbo IS300. He was running a 50-50 mix. It started leaking in 2 days. The pump maintained pressure and there wasn't a visible flow out of the pump. But when I put my hand under it, the whole assembly was damp. I'm going to give this 66-33 mix a shot and see how it holds up. I won't be running it until I have a failsafe.
Everyone I know with a CoolingMist was leaking at some point. However the Aquamist seems to be holding up well but I haven't done that much looking since I just recently decided I will be going their route in the late future (HydraMist is made by Aquamist).
It's hard to argue with the 'on-demand' power afforded by a meth map. Most big-turbo cars gain 80-100+ whp with meth or any other high-octane. For street-use, I think meth is hard to beat. I'm really having to lean toward race-gas for road-race cars. The chances for failure and the oil-degradation makes me think that the risks are just not worth it. The oil really needs to be changed every few gallons of meth, so on a road course you almost need to change the oil daily... On the street, I like the meth. I am starting to lean toward a 66/33 or 70/30 meth/water mix... There have just been too many issues with straight meth. That said, I don't know that I've ever heard of a kit problem with the Alky Control stuff. The Alky Control stuff is really over-built (which is good) but it's more expensive... It's hard to make a final call. The benefits of meth are inarguable. I do think that we need to come up with a more reliable solution. Siegel
Looking at the alky control kit look at the pump....the entire thing is metal and can be sealed much tighter than the plastic ones.
I didn't think the oil degradation was that bad. I was planning on changing oil every 1500 miles or so when I ran methanol, not so much based on how many gallons I went through.
Milo I change my oil every 5000 miles and I use Rotella T. You know me well enough that I romp the car on a daily basis. I've sent my oil off for analysis twice and it looked just fine. I have 90K miles on my car now.
Your oil analysis came back fine while running meth? That's cool to know if that's the case. Rotella T is diesel oil. Hmmm...what made you do this? Inquiring minds want to know.
Uncle Scotty on Nasioc tried it and got great results. Diesel oil has extra additives in it that work great. It isn't just 'diesel' oil....it can be used for both diesel and gasoline engines and it says so on the carton. Plentiful at Wally World for $15-17 for 4 quarts. Cheaper than the other options too which is a plus. I think I will do a test for the community. I will run 5000 miles exclusively on gasoline only and test the oil. Then I will run 5000 miles on meth inj with my normal driving and have that oil to test. Then we can see the difference between the two. Now if you track your car or are under 'constant' meth spray then yeah you need to change your oil FAST.
I'm sitting maybe 2500 miles from my next oil change. However I do a bit of driving so look for results and comparisons around Christmas time.
Dude, that's awesome! I just call it "diesel oil" because that's what I run in my Powerstroke Excursion and what I ran in my Chevy Duramax. Have you tried the synthetic "diesel oil"? I will be interested to see your results. Our driving styles sound very similar, so, you've got my attention.